Through Eyes Like Stars
by Elles Green
Summary: Astro has been visiting Dr. Tenma's old house after that walk in the rain. Doctor Ochanomizu advises that he doesn't go back there for a while. Meanwhile Uran eavesdrops and wants to know what's so special about that place. Rated K
1. Chapter 1

Summary: Astro has been visiting Dr. Tenma's old house after that walk in the rain. Doctor Ochanomizu advises that he doesn't go back there for a while. Meanwhile Uran eavesdrops and wants to know what's so special about this house. Rated PG.

(2003 based (set shortly after Astro vs. Atlas) Using the Japanese names (except Astro) because I like them better.)

Optional ambiance: For an enhanced reading experience, pull up the song _The Night Loop _by _The Birthday Massacre_ (if you can't find that their _Nowhere (Instrumental)_ also works)

Astro Boy (c) Osamu Tezuka

* * *

Chapter 1

"Astro, it would probably be best to stay away from that place for a while."

"But Doctor I-"

"Astro, listen to me. Tensions are still high right now and the last thing we need is someone getting the wrong idea of you being out after dark."

"I'm sorry, I just lost track of time. I didn't mean to."

Of course he didn't. They knew that in the long run that things wouldn't always be this way. That one day people would be more accepting of robots. What they didn't know was that right now, Uran was sitting at the top of the stairs, listening to the two of them.

_Wrong idea?_

She had heard them talking an awful lot about that house lately. It was probably the one Astro had pointed out to her once, maybe figuring that she wouldn't remember where it was. When she tried to ask him more about it he only gave her a few vague answers until she stopped. Uran frowned at the unfairness of it all.

_What's so special about that house anyway?_ _How come Astro won't talk about it? _At this rate she'd fry a circuit. Her mind wouldn't rest with all these questions. _If he's not gonna tell me, I'll have to find out for myself!_

That night Uran sat up in her bed. Those few hours of waiting had paid off. There was no more noise coming up from the living room. No more light falling under the cracks of her door. Everyone was asleep.

Uran quietly got out of bed and got dressed. She put her small flashlight and a map in her coat pockets, and tiptoed down the stairs until she got to the front door, pausing for a moment to make sure it had clicked quietly shut behind her.

Only when she had made it out to the street did she truly think about what she was doing. Out on the sidewalk she was alone; there were no cars, no people, no robots…nothing. The air was crisp and cold, and it was quiet, save for the occasional autumn leaf that fluttered down from the trees.

Walking alongside the road, she noticed that even the houses looked like they were asleep, and if the one she was looking for would look any different this time of night. But after three blocks, nothing looked familiar. She stood under a nearby streetlight to check the map she brought with her. According to it, if she turned onto the next street and kept following it east, up into the hills, she would come across it.

Uran made it up to the first hill without any problems until she got to the intersection. Even though there was no traffic, the light was on red. She briefly wondered if she should wait for the little green man, or if she should take a chance. She looked both ways, no one was coming, but she figured she was already taking a pretty big chance tonight, and that she probably shouldn't risk it.

The rest of the walk felt like it had taken hours, even though Uran's internal clock said it had only been about twenty minutes, twenty minutes and thirteen seconds to be exact.

_I've got to be close by now!_

Off of the main road she spotted the side street that looked kind of familiar. Out where she was, the streetlights gave the night a faint yellow glow, but where she was going there were no streetlights, and for the first time that night she realized how dark it really was. That didn't scare her though, her curiosity was much stronger.

Finally she found the house, if Astro knew she had come here he would have freaked out. Likely with the Doctor in tow, who would be demanding an explanation of what she was doing here of all places. At this time of night! She shone her flashlight up to walkway to see the paint chipped walls and the empty doorway.

_This has to be it._

She was surprised to find the door unlocked and opened it with a big shove. It must have been able to move faster at some point, but the years of neglect had made the door wet and heavy. The house had been long abandoned and something felt…off.

The first room in front of her after the foyer was the living room, with a set of stairs leading to the second floor on one side, and a hallway on the other. Most of the surfaces were covered in a thin layer of dust. The tables, the chairs, even the picture frames. That is, the ones that weren't broken.

Uran frowned._ What does he see in this place?_

Slowly she headed towards the hallway, her small footsteps echoing off the empty walls. There she found a large picture frame face down on the floor. Uran was about to lift it up to look at it when suddenly she heard something, something faint. It was coming from the living room. It sounded like a heavy door opening and closing.

_Astro? _ She froze. He must have followed her here! Now she was in a world of trouble. Uran ducked behind the wall and held her breath, leaning around the edge of the wall just enough to see the front door. Astro would surely find her in a nanosecond, if he hadn't already.

There was another footstep, and then another. However, the moment she focused her ears to find out where they were coming from, they stopped. Uran figured that Astro must be in the middle of the room by now, so she stayed still. In the dark it was difficult to truly make out what she was seeing. If she was really seeing anything, because when she finally worked up the nerve and left her hiding place, she saw…

Nothing.

Uran cautiously took a few steps into the living room. "Astro?" She clicked her flashlight on and shone it around. A small movement from the far end caught the corner of her eye.

"Astro, this isn't funny!" She turned and took a step backward.

Just then her foot hit something that made her jump and drop the flashlight. It rolled along the floor and then came to a stop, its light shining on the face of a robot. Uran crouched down for a better look at it.

Her eyes went wide; it looked just like Nora, no, it was Nora! How could that be? Nora was still at home, powered down for the night. But this Nora was covered in a layer of dust and spider webs.

"Astro?!" She couldn't stay here any longer. "Ok! You found me!" She picked up the flashlight and clicked it off. "You found me! I'm not playing this game!" She held it to her chest and for a moment she thought she might cry.

Uran swore she would never eavesdrop again; all she wanted to do was get out of this place, run home, sneak in, and pretend this never happened.

"Astro….just say something." she whispered.

The door was in front of her, in a few seconds this place would be a memory.

_"Wait."_

Uran froze. That voice!

_" Don't go..."_

That voice, it sounded so much like Astro's, but something about it sounded sadder, emptier, more fragile. Slowly she turned around.

_"Who are you?"_

"I…I'm Uran, what's your name?"

_"Tobio."_


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

"T-Tobio?"

Her mind raced. Her metal heart raced. She had to be hearing things.

A small draft that was running through the room played with the ends of the curtains. Unconsciously, her grip tightened on the flashlight.

Her internal clock told her that it was nearly three in the morning. She started to wonder what she was really doing there when she heard a small noise. It almost sounded like someone saying something again. Uran tried to zone in on the frequency with the sensitive modulators in her ears, but instead of words she found a strange crackling sound.

Something rustled on the floor near her. She glanced over her shoulder, turning her head so slowly that she could almost hear the joints in her neck click, the crackling grew louder.

And closer.

Then she saw it. It was looking right at her, circular eyes reflecting the small amounts of light that had managed to crawl into the room. Slowly it was coming closer, it was…

A mouse?

"Hey little guy." Uran said softly to the little mouse that was sniffing around on the floor. "Were you the one making that noise?"

She took a few steps its direction and crouched down. The mouse looked up at her, continuing to sniff the air. After a moment she heard another sound.

Music.

Faint, a faint repeating melody that she hadn't noticed before. It too was scratchy, like the needle of a radio stuck between two channels. But it didn't sound scary, or even sad. Instead it sounded…happy, in a weird sort of way. This made Uran more curious, but the same could not be said for the mouse who had also heard it .With a squeak, the poor thing bolted back into a hole in the wall.

Maybe, just maybe, Uran wasn't alone. "Where are you?"

The music stopped and she heard that faint crackling again. _"Over here."_

Once again she tried to zone in on its location, but the distorted crackle faded away, as if the voice had dissolved into static.

Maybe she did have a fried circuit. The house was now quiet, save for the light rustling of the curtains in the draft. Which were getting a little annoying. She held one of the curtains still by clutching it in her fist, then carefully letting go, but within seconds the draft had picked it up again.

Uran clicked the flashlight back on. The shadows cast by the abandoned furniture formed a jagged pattern on the walls as the light glided over them. But one of them looked different; maybe it was the way it was detached from the others. Maybe it was the way it seemed to move on its own.

"Hey, wait!"

She followed the shadow until she got to the bottom of the stairs. On the stairs she thought she saw him, with his knees drawn up to his chest and his head resting on his arms. Even with her flashlight's beam directly on him, it was tough to make out any discernible features.

The static sound got louder, then as suddenly as it had started, it stopped. The voice was much clearer this time.

_ "…I'm sorry if I scared you…"_

As if on cue, the charge in her flashlight ran out. But strangely, when the light was off she could get a better look at him. He was close to transparent. His empty eyes were so bright they almost looked like stars, but there was no life in them. She was the one with the questions. But the way he was looking at her seemed to go on and on, like he was looking to her for answers.

"Tobio?" Uran decided to cut to the chase. "Are you the one he keeps coming to see?"

_"Huh?"_

"Astro, he's my brother. He comes here a lot."

_"Astro…"_ he repeated, as if testing out the name. _"He does...but it's not to see me."_

"It's not?"

His voice started to crackle again. _"...I don't think he can see me like you can." _

With a blink, Uran realized he had reappeared at the bottom of the stairs a few feet away, drifting along near her like a little cloud.

_"I was kinda surprised you could see me at all."_

"Really?"

_"Yeah."_

When she had left her house that night to set out on this little adventure, she didn't expect something like this to happen. Moments before she had wanted to run, to leave and forget this old house, but now things were different. As much as she was startled, deep down she had a feeling that whatever, or whoever this "Tobio" was wasn't bad. Not at all.

"What do you do when he's here?"

Tobio shrugged._ "Watch him mostly."_

Well if that's what happened. "What does Astro do when he's here?"

Tobio thought back to a few days ago…

* * *

[A/N]: There's the cliche of supposedly "feeling the hairs on the back of your neck stand up" when around something paranormal. Robots as far as I know don't have neck hairs, so the sound s of "crackling static" are supposed to be the equivalent.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Tobio remembered on summer nights he would lie in bed with the window open, counting the number of cricket chirps he heard before he fell asleep. He would always get tired before he could count very high. Now it was autumn, the crickets were now asleep underground. He could relate.

Though tonight there was a different noise. Peering down from the window he saw something move. Was it him?

Astro walked down the hall, his red boots kicking up dust that rose ghost-like from the floor. He glanced up to the large lamp up on the ceiling. The silence in the room hung just as heavily. He had told himself that he wouldn't stay too long; otherwise the doctor would worry and start asking questions.

He came to the row of picture frames, which was little more than a once empty shelf. Every time he had found a scattered photo, cracked, dusty, or simply worn, he added it to the line. For what reason on that particular shelf he didn't know. The boy was nearly in every one. Astro saw his pictures in his head, would think about him, and have weird random memories of him that never happened. Didn't they? Every time he looked, the boy in the picture frame felt farther away.

Unknown to him, it was in these moments that Tobio would come a little closer. Before he would have felt more threatened, but now, he looked upon the robot in a sort of self-conscious curiosity.

_ "Why did you come back?"_

Tobio floated along near him, trying to figure him out. _"Hey, I'm right-" _Astro walked right through him and Tobio winced. _"…here."_

He found him again upstairs, in what used to be his room. Tobio crept closer still, until he was only a few steps away, between the bed and the doorway.

"What happened to you?" Astro ran his fingers over the frame he was holding. What Dr. Ochonomizu told him was very vague, an "accident", that could mean anything.

Astro let the frame rest in his lap. "Tobio."

Tobio gasped, had he been spotted? No, he couldn't have. He was directly in front of him yet…

Astro wiped his eye on the back of his sleeve. Was he…crying? Tobio had never seen a robot cry before. He sat down next to him on the bed, unable to do much to help. "_You can't hear me either, huh._" More a statement than a question.

* * *

Uran bunched up her hands in her pockets. "He does?"

_"Yeah, usually."_

She noticed something in his voice. "You…don't like him?"

_"What? No, it's not like that."_ He looked back down to the floor. _"I mean, I like robots. They're cool."_ He paused for a moment. _"It's just a little weird."_

Uran faced the mirror hanging on the wall, slowly his appearance faded through Uran's reflection until it replaced it completely.

His voice came from behind her._ "He has my face."_

Without thinking about it Uran touched her own face, she knew how much she looked like her brother too.

"I think I know what you mean, sometimes it's like…" Uran was at a loss for how to explain.

_"You can't measure up?"_

"Y-yeah…" Did he ever feel the same way she did? How long would he stay stuck here? Those awful questions bloomed in her head like poisonous flowers. But she figured that it wasn't right to ask something like that. She tried to fish for a new question, a new statement, anything.

Then a strange thought appeared in her mind. If Astro looked this boy, and she looked like Astro, what did that make to two of them?

_ "I remember when he used to live here."_ His voice started to crackle again. _"They spent…a lot of time together."_

"He lived here?"

Tobio nodded, now on the other side of the room. _"I guess I did get a little jealous at first. But not anymore, now I know better." _He glanced over at the row of picture frames, his eyes settling on the one of him and his father. The one with the cracked glass.

_"It wasn't his fault."_


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

_"I'm here father, I'm still here!" Tobio ran up to him. "What's going on?!"_

_He was going back to the Ministry. It wouldn't be long now._

_"ANSWER ME!"_

_He walked towards him and without breaking stride moved right through him, like he wasn't even there, because he wasn't… at least not any more. He was as good as invisible._

_Tobio's voice started to crack again, this time on the verge of tears. "…you still won't look at me."_

_He didn't notice, not even when the glass in the first picture frame shattered._

* * *

Uran found herself by the windows as the night went on. To a passerby she was just a little girl in a broken down house talking to herself. Though right now she was anything but.

_"Everything about him was just…better." _He looked ashamed._ "I wasn't…that nice to him at first."_

It was tough for Uran to imagine Tobio that way, from what she saw, what she felt, he seemed so gentle. "Why would you do that?!" She straightened up defensively. "Astro hasn't done anything wrong!"

Tobio flinched at Uran's words. _"I know! I know…" _His voice started to dissolve._ "I shouldn't have done it."_

"Done what?"

He started to fade away as he put his hands to his eyes. _"…I couldn't do anything else."_

"Done what? H-hey wait!"

_"…I can't…"_

Uran looked around. "Where'd you go?"

The half-moon outside didn't provide enough light to get a proper look around, and with her flashlight dead, she would have to rely on light and shadows. Getting up, she heard something crinkle near her feet. Her map had fallen out of her pocket. "Tobio?" She picked up her map. "Hey, where are you?"Had she said something she shouldn't have? Now she felt bad. She called out a little louder. "Tobio?"

No answer.

Even the draft that had been toying with the ends of the curtains was gone. But her ears still picked up a small sound, splintering off of her audio modulators. He had to nearby, but where?

Uran closed her eyes and tried to think. _If I were him, where would I go? _After a moment she drew a blank, she had no idea. She had found him on the stairs at first. _Upstairs! He might be there! _She could just make out the banister a few feet away and headed towards it. The stairs creaked under her feet as she headed to the second floor.

* * *

_"Tobio?" Dr. Tenma heard a small noise coming from outside the boy's room. "Are you still awake?" He looked in and saw him curled up in his bed, fast asleep. It had only been a month since they had come home from the Ministry of Science and he had adjusted so well. He was about to shut the door when heard the noise again, down at the end of the hall. It almost sounded like a footstep, and then another. With a small amount of hesitation, he glanced over his shoulder. In the dark he couldn't see well. A small shape came into his peripheral vision, only to be a picture frame hanging on the wall when he turned his head._

_The floor creaked again, this time much louder, and closer. The noise seemed to stop right in front of him and then it was gone. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest, and tried his best to dismiss it; the house wasn't that old, new building materials often took time to settle into place. Surely that was all it was. It was probably nothing. Dr. Tenma thought to himself. It was getting late._

_By the end of the month, he was hearing the footsteps everywhere._

* * *

Uran took a few more steps, running her hand along the wall until her fingers caught in something. In the wall there was a small but sharp indentation, as if something had hit it with a strong force. Stepping into the hallway, she was startled as her flashlight suddenly flickered back to life.

_"You might need that."_

"There you are!" She nearly laughed in relief. "Where were you?"

_"I don't know. That hasn't happened in a long time…" _Tobio turned away self-consciously._ "Sorry about that."_

At least now Uran could get a better look around. There was a row of small lights mounted on the wall; some of the bulbs were broken. The hardwood floor looked dusty and uneven with age. She let her flashlight's beam rest on the floor. "I'm sorry too; I didn't mean to upset you."

_"I know you didn't." _He was quiet for a minute before he spoke up again._ "Can I ask you something?"_

"Sure, what?"

_"What are you looking for here?"_

"What do you mean?"

_"You have that look, like you're looking for something. Something you lost."_

Uran looked away sadly.

He blinked_. "Something…he lost?"_

"I guess so; I mean…ever since Astro has been coming here he's been mopey all the time." She clicked her flashlight off again, finding that as long as Tobio was back she didn't need it. "I thought if I could figure out why he comes here, I could get him to stop being sad and to be Astro again." She shrugged. "But I haven't found anything, except you."

_"He's lucky to have you."_

"What else does he do here? Besides finding picture frames?"

Tobio thought for a moment. _"Not a lot. Sometimes he talks."_

"Talks?"

_"Yeah, like he's thinking out loud or something…sometimes it almost sounds like he's talking to me. But I know he's not."_

"How do you know he's not?"

_"He never answers when I try to talk back, he never hears me"_ His voice started to crackle again. _"…or looks at me…"_

* * *

_"This isn't real."Tobio held his head in his hands. "This can't be real."_

_It had to be some kind of nightmare. "People don't replace people."_

_If only he had a way of finding out what was really going on, but nothing he did was working. He had never felt so discouraged. "They're not supposed to replace people but…"__ He stared at his urn up on the shelf in the closet.__"What can I do...I'm so small now."_

_He felt himself fading away again. "I can't do anything". His vision started to blur and faint lines came into view, interlacing with his surroundings. He was overwhelmed, and not sure what he was feeling or thinking. The more he tried to process things, the more frustrating they became. "I…can't…do anything!"_

_A small sound snapped him out of his despair. He looked back up his urn and noticed something, a small crack in the glaze. That hadn't been there before had it? Did…he do that?_

* * *

_"It's not easy Uran, being like this." _He looked down to where his feet would have been. "_All I can do is break things…nothing works out." _There was something different now in the quality of his voice. Before it had sounded thin and fragile like a piece of glass, but now it was stronger and clearer. He sat down and leaned back against the wall. _"For the longest time I thought I was stuck in some kind of nightmare. And that one day…one day I'd wake up and be alive again. And things would go back to how they used to be. Kinda stupid ,huh?"_

"Stupid? I- no, I don't think so."

"You don't?"

The way he looked at her was different too, a pleading glance replaced with a look of acceptance. Like he hadn't expected her understand in the first place. But she had.

She sat down next to him. "No. Not one bit."

For the first time in a long time, Tobio smiled.

* * *

[A/N: One of my working titles for this was Eyes in the Dark. It was going to be a lot different, and in my opinion, scarier. It involved both Astro _and_ Uran with a video camera, and it was going to be a lot like Paranormal Activity. I couldn't get it to work because Tobio was a lot meaner, and Uran didn't have any special abilities. Plus it was kind of a rip off.]


End file.
